Hydrogen Storage

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GT4 genius

GT4 genius

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GT4genius or GTP_...
This issue was brought up on top gear last weekend. It is a big issue because it looks like the fuel of the futhur but it isn't dense enough to go far as a gas and storing it as a liquid requires extreme temperatures or pressures. Clarkson method something about producing it on metal, what did he mean by this?

This can be a sort of brain storm for ideas!
 
Hydrogen can be stored inside a metal. I'm not sure exactly what metal has been experimented with, but you basically warm a solid block of metal up a bit and put it in a tank of hydrogen, the hydrogen atoms will get in between the atoms in the metal. If you cool the metal down then it stays in there, and comes out again when you warm it up.

That is obviously a really basic and probably not entirely correct description.

Storing the hydrogen inside a solid metal is, last time I checked, the most space efficient way to store hydrogen. You get the most hydrogen per volume. However, I would bet it is also the worst for weight efficiency, meaning you get the least amount of hydrogen per the mass required to store it.

I don't think this method is at all practical at the moment though, it wouldn't be particularly easy to get hydrogen in and out. The most sensible storage option, to me, seems to be storing it as a gas in a high pressure (like 5000 psi maybe) tank.
 
I know you said ur description was probably wrong butyou said you have to warm the metal, but liquid hydrogen is -253*C so the metal would cool instantly. Or any H that touched it would evaporate.
 
GT4 genius
I know you said ur description was probably wrong butyou said you have to warm the metal, but liquid hydrogen is -253*C so the metal would cool instantly. Or any H that touched it would evaporate.
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You wouldn't need liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen gas under extreme pressure would be fine.
 
Yup, when I said tank I was thinking a tank of gas rather than liquid.

Like I said I know very little about how you get the hydrogen into the metal and then how you get it to stay there, or how you get it back out. Last time I had read anything about it this wasn't a very practical procedure.
 
What about the super insulated tank in the 7 series hydro, would that be extremely expensive.
 
Any H2 solution I can think of (and I've taken Engineering classes) would be pretty expensive until an inexpensive manufacturing method can be implemented. Plastic doesn't have the shear or tensile strength, nor does the typical spot-welding. You need about 1/4" thick steel and some heavy duty welding to store Hydrogen in liquid form at the size needed for an automobile. I'm talking needing a qualified welder or welding contractor to pull this off, and lots and lots of welding materials used. (Flux, wire, etc)

Otherwise, you get a burst, and that's no fun.

I'm not sure about the metal, either, but that sounds like it requires high pressures, too.

But, hey, that's why I'm becoming a Manufacturing Engineer. I'd be the guy who tells the design engineers, "Hey, you can't build this cheap!" ^^
 
Would it not be better to make a perfect mould of the tank, then there would be no weak pionts such as weilds. I wonder what BMW used to make there tank. Would there be any issues with steal becoming weak or brittle at -253*C.
 
Jim Prower
But, hey, that's why I'm becoming a Manufacturing Engineer. I'd be the guy who tells the design engineers, "Hey, you can't build this cheap!" ^^
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Then they shout back,"its the only way, make it cheap!"

GT4 genius
Would it not be better to make a perfect mould of the tank, then there would be no weak pionts such as weilds. I wonder what BMW used to make there tank. Would there be any issues with steal becoming weak or brittle at -253*C.
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You can't blow mold steel (to my knowledge) so you'd have to cast it. Now casting probably wouldn't give the best properties.

And yes, temperature would be a huge thing with steel. Not only would an empy tank contract hugely when filled, but it would also have to be insulated somehow from the atmosphere. Warm one side, freezing the other wouldn't be a great thing.
 
BMW figured all this out, but i think theres is only big enough to do 100 miles and it is soo well insulated it must be really expensive. I read once it would take 13 yrs for a block of ice to melt inside, although thats probably just some unrealistic exaggeration!
Does anyone know what Honda use in their FFV?
 
I'd be a little surprised if there is any really new technology in the BMW fuel tank. I know tanks of liquid nitrogen got delivered to our school for experiments and such.

I just read that four liters of liquid hydrogen contains about the same amount of energy as one liter of gasoline, so I could see why they want to store it in liquid form. If you were going to do a gas you'd probably have to have a pretty enormous tank.

Not that it couldn't be done, but when you are converting a car that was originally designed with gasoline in mind it's hard to find space for a big tank.
 
Electrolyse it out of water. That way all you need is a standard water tank :sly:

However upon electrolysis of water it tends to explode as the hydrogen ignites :|
 
Sharky.
Electrolyse it out of water. That way all you need is a standard water tank :sly:

However upon electrolysis of water it tends to explode as the hydrogen ignites :|
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That's like using an electric fan to proper air for a turbine that makes power. :lol:

The whole point, I thought, of Hydrogen as a power-source was the possibility of reverse Electrolysis - letting it bind with oxygen to form water, in the process releasing electrons.
 
Not burn. Bind. Or whatever it's called in English.

Combustion, burning, whatever, doesn't produce water. Hence not what I'm looking for.
 
What? One of the products of combustion is water vapor.
 
I fail at technical English.

I'm still not sure that's it, though. I recall something to do with membranes forcing an electron out of system, creating electricity which powers the car.
 
You are thinking of a fuel cell. But the combustion thing is what BMW used, and yes it is combustion of hydrogen, even though you get water from it. A fuel cell works differently ofcourse, it uses electricity to power the car instead of pressure from expanding gas caused by combustion.
 
Metar
That's like using an electric fan to proper air for a turbine that makes power. :lol:
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My post sounded better in my head... :lol:

Metar
letting it bind with oxygen to form water, in the process releasing electrons.
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It wouldn't (shouldn't) release electrons. Oxygen has six valence electrons, hydrogen one. When two H atoms are bonded with one oxygen atom, all three atoms have a full complement of valence electrons (8 for O, 2 for H) - no electrons are released ;)
 

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